“Exalted souls
Have passions in proportion, violent,
Resistless and tormenting: they’re a tax
Imposed by nature in preëminence,
And Fortitude, and Wisdom must support them.”
LILLO.
When Olmedo left his house under such excited feelings, he unconsciously
followed the path which led to the grove where Beatriz was, and which he
knew to be her favorite retreat. In his present condition of mind, she
was the last person his reason would have counselled him to meet, but led
by an inward attraction, without seeking the meeting, his steps took him
towards where she had just risen from prayer. So distracted, however,
was he with his conflicting emotions, that she saw him the first. It was
too late to avoid him, which she would not have done had she been able.
Conscious of the rectitude of her own desires, and pacified by her late
appeal to heaven, she obeyed her impulse and advanced towards him. As he
suddenly looked up and saw her within a few steps, a faintness came over
him, and he was well nigh falling, but with a great effort recovering
himself, he took her hand as frankly as it was offered.
Both were silent. Each felt the crisis of their fate had arrived. Nature,
when her mightiest agencies are about to go forth in the hurricane, the
earthquake, or the volcanic eruption, is for the moment breathless. So
the human soul anticipates its most direful trials by utter stillness.
They walked on side by side, going deeper into the wood, as if to screen
themselves from all the world. Yet neither knew why they did so, only it
was a relief to be together and to be apart from every one else. Though
not a word had been spoken, each felt the confession had been made, and
they began to tremble, as did the guilty pair in Paradise when they first
heard the voice of the Creator. Why should they tremble?
To love surely was no crime. That hearts like theirs should in meeting
mingle, God had ordained when he first created man and woman. Whence,
then, the thrill too deep for utterance that paralyzed their tongues?
Beatriz was not a woman to shrink from the display of her own feelings.
She was one rather to avow them, and meet the consequences fearless in
her honesty. Olmedo had never before shrunk from speaking directly from
his heart words of truth or admonition. Why, then, did these innocent
ones act as if guilt was upon them? Because the Church had said to him,
“thou shalt not love her whom God gave thee for a companion, and to her,
thou shalt not be a companion to him.” Thus man’s forgery of God’s will,
making Him to say, “it is good for man to be alone,” had given to each of
these sufferers, who by his laws were mated in love and sympathy in body
and soul, for time and eternity, a false conscience which perverted their
good into their evil. Much of theology is indeed a cunningly contrived
system of man’s to make himself miserable, despite the broad ordinances
of the Creator, to be read in all his works, “to go forth and enjoy the
world, to be fruitful and multiply, to love Him with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and “thy neighbor as thyself.” Man
will not be in his proper relation to his Maker, until he escapes from
the dogmas and creeds of a conventional Christianity and walks with Him,
as did Enoch, in the faith of that perfect love which casteth out all
fear.
But man in his soul-progress can keep pace only with his age and
opportunity. The duties he voluntarily assumes are still duties, though
more light may have widened his own prospect. He is but a link in the
vast chain of humanity, no one of which can be ruptured without affecting
it through its entire extent. He is, therefore, to consider well before
he acts whether in seeking his own personal gratification, or even in
obeying the right instincts of his heart, he may not offend others,
or do a general injury for a particular good. In all doubtful moral
emergencies, duty says obey the higher law, or that which shows that thou
lovest thy neighbor as thyself.
There is a blessing in the principle of obedience, springing from
self-sacrificing motives, which, whatever may be the result in this life,
is sure of its final reward. Duties, whether artificial or not, are the
moral diamond dust, by which our souls are polished. As we free ourselves
from all selfish considerations in our relations with others, so shall
our hope be converted into joy in the next life. It is well, therefore,
to bear our burdens meekly and with courage here, that we may travel the
lighter hereafter.
Olmedo was distracted between his vows and his desire. How could he to
the simple natives recall his teachings and example as a monk, upon the
one point of celibacy, which in him was now in such peril! Could they
comprehend his recantation? Would not the little truth that had already
begun to be understood among them, based as it was more upon their
respect for one who showed himself superior to their ordinary passions,
than to an intellectual appreciation of his doctrines, would not this
seed even be lost, and the priest, tabued to women, be hereafter esteemed
only as one of themselves? Besides, the doctrine of self-abnegation, or
the crucifying of his natural instincts, which although his now more
enlightened reason showed him could not be an acceptable sacrifice
to their author, except in refraining from their abuse, still had a
deep hold upon him, particularly as it was his own love that had just
stimulated his mind to the full exercise of its freedom. He who had
already sacrificed so much to an erroneous idea, could he not now
complete the sacrifice for the sake of the good to others? Would not such
a sacrifice to the principle of love to his neighbor, and of duty to his
vows, be bread upon the waters, to be returned to him at the end of
time? Each heart had its schooling for eternity. The struggle to decide
his future—his salvation had come. What was once right for him as a free
man, was now wrong as pledged to a religion whose tenets had ever been
his love and admiration.
Such had been his reflections. They had flashed through his mind and
ten-fold more, with piercing throbs of conscience, as in silence he
walked by the side of Beatriz with his eyes fixed on the ground, while
his blood was beating time to passion’s marches, and his affections
yearned, nay, clamored to take Beatriz to wife. They had come to him
with all the quickness and vividness with which the entire previous life
crowds itself into the brief struggle of the drowning man. Speak he could
not. His tongue was rooted to his mouth.
With Beatriz the struggle was different. She made no pretence to conceal
what was longer impossible, but waited with quickened pulse and tremulous
feeling, to hear him break the silence. His mental agony was perfectly
intelligible to her. Without analyzing as he did the circumstances of
their position, they flooded her heart like a spring freshet. It might
break, but she would give no sigh that should tempt him from his holy
allegiance. Once his decision made, her heart was wholly his, either to
sustain him in duty, or to share his lot. With Ruth she would have said,
“Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee,
for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.”
How long they wandered thus, or how far, neither could realize, for
every step was as if a millstone were tied to their heels. In their doubt
and conflict the landscape, so joyous in itself, seemed overspread with
gloom. The very sun, as it stole through the thick verdure overhead,
shot upon them cold and mocking rays—light without warmth. Heaven was
darkened, and the earth gave them no rest.
At last they sat down; Beatriz on a log, and Olmedo at her feet.
Around and over them rose a rural bower, carpeted with soft mosses and
canopied with vines, fragrant in blossoms and flowers. The birds warbled
melodiously even at noon-day in this shady retreat. Near by, flowed a
little brook with gentle murmurings, a vein of life coursing through the
green sward, on its way to a torrent stream that thundered far below.
Through an opening in the trees, mountain-ward in the far distance could
be seen the glassy curve of the cataract which fed both. Rising from its
mist, enclosing in its hollow the entire gorge from which it issued,
was a perfect rainbow, forming a frame of wondrous beauty to nature’s
painting. On the opposite side, glimmering through the forests like a
silver horizon, was the ocean, its waves sparkling and dancing in the
bright sun as the fresh trade-wind swept over it, and, cooled by its
breath, came stealing with soft notes and reviving breeze through every
leafy cranny of the dense jungle. The quick darting, bright eyed lizards,
crept out of their holes and played about their human friends, sure that
they had nothing to fear from them. Adam and Eve when they slept in
Paradise, were not more alone with the communings of nature than were
apparently this pair. A scene more soothing, since its gates were closed
upon our race, the earth had never offered to mankind. Yet for a while
it was unheeded, for the eyes of both were turned within; gradually,
however, its beauties dawned upon them. They looked around. Beatriz first
spoke. “Olmedo,” she said, “does not God reign here? How beautiful is
this landscape? how filled with repose; all nature is hushed in harmony.
Why is it we alone are unhappy?”
As she said this her face lighted up with its wonted smile for him. She
wished to chase away the gloom that darkened his brow. The appeal was
irresistible. There was before him the rainbow, God’s sign of hope and
protection for man; there was her smile which for so many years, and
through so many trials, had been the rainbow to his heart. Why should it
be less now? Could he not learn to accept its spirit, without coveting
her possession?
His heart melted. He laid his head upon her knees, and for an instant
wept aloud. Their hands soon met, and were entwined; then their eyes—long
and earnestly they searched each other’s souls. All the tenderness and
truth of natures, warm like theirs with humanity’s deepest sympathies,
poured forth responsive in that gaze. From her face, lighted with love’s
softest smile, bending over him with an angel look, as if it would pour
into his torn heart all the peace, purity, and sacrifice hers contained,
there shone a celestial glow, which savored more of heaven than earth.
Bright spirits were communing with them; spirits of love and joy. Alas!
their lips meet, and in one lingering kiss, the first of love’s passion
either had known, was concentrated all the long pent-up affection of
their two lives.